Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management Principles

Hi, if you're a new viewer to Taking the Biz, on this channel we try and provide revision tutorials for A-level business students. Today's video we're going to take a look at one of our key motivational theories, developed by Frederick Taylor, became known as the Scientific Management School of Thought, or the Scientific Management Perspective, and today we're going to have a look at what the underlying principles were of this theory of... motivation. So our starting point has to be to say that all of Frederick Taylor's thoughts, his philosophies when it came to motivation theory are underpinned by what we call a theory X management style. So Taylor was a classic theory X manager. He came from the perspective that workers were inherently lazy. Workers were reluctant to be productive. They had to be coerced into doing work. The workers really weren't interested in things like autonomy or decision-making power, that the job of managers was to try and provide very clear guidelines and instructions and coercion for workers in order to try and get the best out of them. And really that TheoryX philosophy really stems through all of the beliefs and the ideas and the philosophies that Taylor developed. So Taylor was doing his work on motivation and how to improve productivity and get the best out of a workforce right at the start of the 1900s. And it was a time when work perhaps isn't organized in exactly the same way as we might know it today. So when Taylor was a management consultant, he was going from business to business in Pennsylvania in America where he was from. One of the things that he found was that recruitment and training were perhaps very, very basic compared to what we know them as today. Recruitment could be as informal as workers bringing friends and family who are out of work with them the next day if the organisation required greater labour. So rather than formal recruitment processes, entrepreneurs would recruit new workers literally by tapping into their existing workforce and say, bring along tomorrow anybody you know who's looking for work and when those people turned up there might be very little by way of formal training for them so it might be the responsibility of the friend or family member that's brought them in to do some on-the-job training with them to teach them the rope show them how to do that work but in terms of formal training provided by the organization very very little work was so disorganized at the time that taylor was working you employees would even sort of bring their own tools and equipment to the workplace rather than being provided with those that were most suitable for the job and there was certainly no structure in terms of deciding how somebody should approach their job it would really be up to the workers to decide how best they thought getting their tasks done should be approached so taylor tried to revolutionize that taylor tried to change it he tried to provide much more order much more structure especially with regards to training. And one thing that Taylor was an absolute key believer in was what's known as the division of labour. Rather than workers working in an organisation and completing a project from start to finish, Taylor was an absolute massive advocate of breaking the production process down into smaller, more specialised jobs or tasks. And rather than workers being responsible for a variety of those tasks, Taylor believed in matching employees based on their skills and sometimes their physical prowess to just completing one specialised task, dividing up the labour process so that workers were repetitively doing just one task. And this repetition, so Taylor prophesied, would help develop greater. productivity from the workforce doing those jobs. So he was a big advocate of training employees, a big advocate in dividing up the labour process. And the way he did that was to conduct what were known as time and motion studies. So Taylor would literally stand alongside employees doing the jobs, doing the specialised tasks that he divided up a factory into, and he would time workers doing their task over and over and over again. What Taylor was looking for was that worker that could get that task done in the quickest time, the one that was the most productive. And what Taylor did was he would then take that one best way of performing that task. And he would train other people who were doing that task to do it in exactly the same way. So if he can identify the quickest way of doing a certain task, he would then train other workers in that methodology so that every worker could work in the most productive way possible. But what we want, though, is to think about tailor and motivation, because identifying the one best way of doing a task is great. But if workers aren't motivated to do it that way, and if workers aren't motivated to work quickly and work productively, the system falls down. So what Taylor did was trying to inject monetary rewards into organisations in order to coerce employees to increase their productivity. Once Taylor had trained people in the one best way of doing their task, doing their part of the labour process, He would then set some very ambitious targets, output targets, productivity targets for employees to try and work towards. Now, if employees couldn't meet those targets, if they couldn't work to a level that Taylor had identified as being the level that all workers doing that task are trying to achieve, they would be paid a very, very basic level of pay. One that was almost not enough for them and their families to be able to survive on. And this was meant to try and stimulate them into wanting to hit the targets that Taylor had set for them. But he went a stage further than that. And Taylor would pay very, very generous bonuses to employees who went beyond the output targets that he had set for them. So he started to develop what was known as a piece rate pay system, where once workers had exceeded their minimum output targets, every piece of work they did beyond that, they would be paid. an additional fee for. So it really provided a stimulus for employees to get as much work done as possible, produce as many pieces of work as they possibly could, because they were financially rewarded for doing so. And this piece rate system was a really effective way of improving the productivity of organisations. Now suddenly all workers had the eye of the tiger and they were driving out as much work as they could possibly get done because it was financially worthwhile for them to do so. So the organisation benefited from these productivity gains, but the employees benefited as well financially themselves. Now there were follow-on benefits for the organisations of these productivity gains. First of all, it meant that they now had perhaps two workers doing the job of five workers, so they didn't need such big labour forces so they could let some of their employees go. Driving down their labour costs, driving down their unit costs, driving down the cost of production for the organisation, making the organisation leaner and more efficient in the process. Now, those benefits were not always long in the memory for many organisations. It turned out that Taylorism and the scientific management approach he took to motivating workers actually ran into some problems. partly was a victim of its own success. The fact that organisations no longer needed as many workers because the ones they did have were now more productive actually acted in some organisations as a demotivating factor as well. Employees found that their friends, family members, their colleagues losing their jobs made them fearful for their own jobs. They also found that they were working in organisations where the productivity targets they were set were constantly being increased. to try and drive ever greater productivity in the organization. And as some workers couldn't keep up with the pace of the organization, they found that they weren't achieving their piece rate pay bonuses and weren't achieving a level of pay that they felt that their efforts were worthy of. So it actually started to generate some negatives for organizations as well. It particularly meant that there was industrial unrest in many organizations. The fact that many workers felt that they were losing colleagues, losing friends, that they felt that that was unfair, that they were fearful for their own jobs. and wanted to protect their employment. And the fact that they felt that sometimes the output targets they were being set weren't fair and weren't equitable meant that Taylorism actually led to quite a rise in trade union membership as well. It led to a rise in industrial action in the organisations where Taylorist principles were being adopted. And so this is why in future tutorials, and I'll put some links up there in the corner to other motivational technique tutorials, this is why other kind of motivational theories began to develop. in the early 1900s because Taylorism, whilst very, very effective at approving productivity when it was first being thought through and brought into organisations, suddenly started to develop a few issues and a few problems that people sought solutions for. That being said, some of Taylor's underpinning principles are still incredibly prevalent in the workplace today. Things like the division of labour, those time and motion studies, identifying the one best way of doing a job, are still widely used, particularly in manufacturing organisations. The idea of piece rate pays, performance related bonuses, output targets, are still commonly used, not just in manufacturing, but in service sector and sales organisations as well. So these ideas that Taylor crafted and created there, Although there are definite issues that kind of stemmed out of these philosophies, still incredibly popular and widely used today. The underlying principle that Taylor worked to, the key headline that we've got to remember about the scientific management school, is that it was these financial monetary rewards that are the key to motivating workers. Taylor, because of that Theory X approach... He was a firm believer that you shovel money in the direction of workers and you will get greater output and productivity as a reward. So that is our one key fundamental principle for scientific management. Monetary rewards are the things that attract greater productivity. Look out for our other tutorials. You probably want to binge watch these motivational theory videos. Try and learn about them all at once. We'll have a look at Mayo. Look at our friend Maslow. We'll have a little look at Freddie Hertzberg as well. But that covers us for Taylorism. Best of luck in Eurovision. Keep on taking the beers.

So Taylor was a classic theory X manager. He came from the perspective that workers were inherently lazy. Workers were reluctant to be productive.

They had to be coerced into doing work. The workers really weren't interested in things like autonomy or decision-making power, that the job of managers was to try and provide very clear guidelines and instructions and coercion for workers in order to try and get the best out of them. And really that TheoryX philosophy really stems through all of the beliefs and the ideas and the philosophies that Taylor developed.

So Taylor was doing his work on motivation and how to improve productivity and get the best out of a workforce right at the start of the 1900s. And it was a time when work perhaps isn't organized in exactly the same way as we might know it today. So when Taylor was a management consultant, he was going from business to business in Pennsylvania in America where he was from.

One of the things that he found was that recruitment and training were perhaps very, very basic compared to what we know them as today. Recruitment could be as informal as workers bringing friends and family who are out of work with them the next day if the organisation required greater labour. So rather than formal recruitment processes, entrepreneurs would recruit new workers literally by tapping into their existing workforce and say, bring along tomorrow anybody you know who's looking for work and when those people turned up there might be very little by way of formal training for them so it might be the responsibility of the friend or family member that's brought them in to do some on-the-job training with them to teach them the rope show them how to do that work but in terms of formal training provided by the organization very very little work was so disorganized at the time that taylor was working you employees would even sort of bring their own tools and equipment to the workplace rather than being provided with those that were most suitable for the job and there was certainly no structure in terms of deciding how somebody should approach their job it would really be up to the workers to decide how best they thought getting their tasks done should be approached so taylor tried to revolutionize that taylor tried to change it he tried to provide much more order much more structure especially with regards to training. And one thing that Taylor was an absolute key believer in was what's known as the division of labour.

Rather than workers working in an organisation and completing a project from start to finish, Taylor was an absolute massive advocate of breaking the production process down into smaller, more specialised jobs or tasks. And rather than workers being responsible for a variety of those tasks, Taylor believed in matching employees based on their skills and sometimes their physical prowess to just completing one specialised task, dividing up the labour process so that workers were repetitively doing just one task. And this repetition, so Taylor prophesied, would help develop greater.

productivity from the workforce doing those jobs. So he was a big advocate of training employees, a big advocate in dividing up the labour process. And the way he did that was to conduct what were known as time and motion studies. So Taylor would literally stand alongside employees doing the jobs, doing the specialised tasks that he divided up a factory into, and he would time workers doing their task over and over and over again.

What Taylor was looking for was that worker that could get that task done in the quickest time, the one that was the most productive. And what Taylor did was he would then take that one best way of performing that task. And he would train other people who were doing that task to do it in exactly the same way.

So if he can identify the quickest way of doing a certain task, he would then train other workers in that methodology so that every worker could work in the most productive way possible. But what we want, though, is to think about tailor and motivation, because identifying the one best way of doing a task is great. But if workers aren't motivated to do it that way, and if workers aren't motivated to work quickly and work productively, the system falls down. So what Taylor did was trying to inject monetary rewards into organisations in order to coerce employees to increase their productivity. Once Taylor had trained people in the one best way of doing their task, doing their part of the labour process, He would then set some very ambitious targets, output targets, productivity targets for employees to try and work towards.

Now, if employees couldn't meet those targets, if they couldn't work to a level that Taylor had identified as being the level that all workers doing that task are trying to achieve, they would be paid a very, very basic level of pay. One that was almost not enough for them and their families to be able to survive on. And this was meant to try and stimulate them into wanting to hit the targets that Taylor had set for them.

But he went a stage further than that. And Taylor would pay very, very generous bonuses to employees who went beyond the output targets that he had set for them. So he started to develop what was known as a piece rate pay system, where once workers had exceeded their minimum output targets, every piece of work they did beyond that, they would be paid.

an additional fee for. So it really provided a stimulus for employees to get as much work done as possible, produce as many pieces of work as they possibly could, because they were financially rewarded for doing so. And this piece rate system was a really effective way of improving the productivity of organisations.

Now suddenly all workers had the eye of the tiger and they were driving out as much work as they could possibly get done because it was financially worthwhile for them to do so. So the organisation benefited from these productivity gains, but the employees benefited as well financially themselves. Now there were follow-on benefits for the organisations of these productivity gains.

First of all, it meant that they now had perhaps two workers doing the job of five workers, so they didn't need such big labour forces so they could let some of their employees go. Driving down their labour costs, driving down their unit costs, driving down the cost of production for the organisation, making the organisation leaner and more efficient in the process. Now, those benefits were not always long in the memory for many organisations. It turned out that Taylorism and the scientific management approach he took to motivating workers actually ran into some problems. partly was a victim of its own success.

The fact that organisations no longer needed as many workers because the ones they did have were now more productive actually acted in some organisations as a demotivating factor as well. Employees found that their friends, family members, their colleagues losing their jobs made them fearful for their own jobs. They also found that they were working in organisations where the productivity targets they were set were constantly being increased. to try and drive ever greater productivity in the organization. And as some workers couldn't keep up with the pace of the organization, they found that they weren't achieving their piece rate pay bonuses and weren't achieving a level of pay that they felt that their efforts were worthy of.

So it actually started to generate some negatives for organizations as well. It particularly meant that there was industrial unrest in many organizations. The fact that many workers felt that they were losing colleagues, losing friends, that they felt that that was unfair, that they were fearful for their own jobs.

and wanted to protect their employment. And the fact that they felt that sometimes the output targets they were being set weren't fair and weren't equitable meant that Taylorism actually led to quite a rise in trade union membership as well. It led to a rise in industrial action in the organisations where Taylorist principles were being adopted. And so this is why in future tutorials, and I'll put some links up there in the corner to other motivational technique tutorials, this is why other kind of motivational theories began to develop. in the early 1900s because Taylorism, whilst very, very effective at approving productivity when it was first being thought through and brought into organisations, suddenly started to develop a few issues and a few problems that people sought solutions for.

That being said, some of Taylor's underpinning principles are still incredibly prevalent in the workplace today. Things like the division of labour, those time and motion studies, identifying the one best way of doing a job, are still widely used, particularly in manufacturing organisations. The idea of piece rate pays, performance related bonuses, output targets, are still commonly used, not just in manufacturing, but in service sector and sales organisations as well. So these ideas that Taylor crafted and created there, Although there are definite issues that kind of stemmed out of these philosophies, still incredibly popular and widely used today. The underlying principle that Taylor worked to, the key headline that we've got to remember about the scientific management school, is that it was these financial monetary rewards that are the key to motivating workers.

Taylor, because of that Theory X approach... He was a firm believer that you shovel money in the direction of workers and you will get greater output and productivity as a reward. So that is our one key fundamental principle for scientific management. Monetary rewards are the things that attract greater productivity. Look out for our other tutorials.

You probably want to binge watch these motivational theory videos. Try and learn about them all at once. We'll have a look at Mayo.

Look at our friend Maslow. We'll have a little look at Freddie Hertzberg as well. But that covers us for Taylorism. Best of luck in Eurovision. Keep on taking the beers.

Transcript for:Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management Principles

Transcript for:
Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management Principles